One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

Jerry Madden, a long serving NASA project manager, lists out his '100 Lessons Learned for Project Managers'. Among his perls of wisdom:

• Rule #5: Vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked persons, gentlemen, and ladies can be project managers. Lost souls, procrastinators, and wishy-washies cannot.
• Rule #20: You cannot watch everything. What you can watch is the people. They have to know you will not accept a poor job.
• Rule #24: One must pay close attention to workaholics—if they get going in the wrong direction, they can do a lot of damage in a short time.
• Rule #38: Never undercut your staff in public (i.e., In public meetings, don't reverse decisions on work that you have given them to do). Even if you direct a change, never take the responsibility for implementing away from your staff.
• Rule #56: The first sign of trouble comes from the schedule or the cost curve. Engineers are the last to know they are in trouble. Engineers are born optimists.
• Rule #66: Don't assume you know why senior management has done something. If you feel you need to know, ask. You get some amazing answers that will astonish you.
• Rule #79: Next year is always the year with adequate funding and schedule. Next year arrives on the 50th year of your career.
• Rule #84: Never make a decision from a cartoon. Look at the actual hardware or what real information is available such as layouts. Too much time is wasted by people trying to cure a cartoon whose function is to explain the principle.

I'm a bit worried he has so many rules to follow :)